UPDATE 5.31pm: THE woman at the centre of the burqa row, Carnita Matthews, has a long record of driving offences and a history of not paying her fines.
Court documents have revealed that she had been fined seven times for traffic infringements before she was stopped by police in June last year for not displaying her P-plates in the incident that sparked the row that spilled over to the District Court in NSW yesterday.
Since she first received her learner licence in 1998 at the age of 33, she has twice had her provisional licence suspended for totting up too many demerit points and twice had her licence suspended for non payment of fines.
The State Debt Recovery Office had to recover the fines. Both of those two suspensions for non payment of fines were later lifted.
It is not known how many times she was physically stopped by police and whether she had her face covered by a burqa or a niqab on those occasions.
